Reading Quiz Little Pufferfish

Creating your Own Listening Materials for the English Class

Licda. Ana Patricia López Quirós.

HIgh School Teacher and Univeristy Professor.

Saturday, March 23rd, 2019. 

Being an efficient English teacher involves several aspects: You have to constantly update your knowledge in the language, you have to show passion for what you do without neglecting your understanding in using technological tools that can enhance the quality of the teaching-learning process.  That is why, English teachers should commit with the idea  to study how to use some suitable free webpages available for those  teachers who really want to innovate in their everyday doing.  Each time, an English teacher discovers a useful tool, he/she should share it with their colleagues. Why? Well, simply because in this way the other teachers will start practicing and incorporating them in their teaching as well. Truly, SoundCloud  and WavePad are great tools that can help teachers create their own materials in order to catch students’ attention.

SoundCloud is an audio platform.  It empowers the audio creators with the best tools, services and resources for the class. The potential behind SoundCloud is unlimited, since with soundCloud you can be the creator of your own materials to use in class. Besides, if the teacher finds out an article that looks  very useful for the class, he/she can convert it to a listening exercise for the students to hear it as many times as possible. As doing this, teachers might revolutionize the way they teach their classes. They can use these materials in class or they can send them to their students for them to practice and to continue being in contact with the language. Let us remember that students prefer to listen to different materials rather than reading them. Consequently, this would turn out to be a practical way to make them learn English structures and vocabulary, since listening is a way to acquire the input that students need to improve their English proficiency. In addition to this, English teachers can go beyond the class, by helping others who are very away from them. English teachers can share their productions with those people who do not have the means to buy other types of materials that come from abroad.  

Students might learn how to use listening material  as well; so they can use it to create their own works. By doing this, students might share their makings as a way to increase the motivation in class and as a way to help each other. Students can look for their own materials to record. The topics could be open in order to make them do this with enthusiasm.  The point here is to make them be in continual contact with the language. Besides, by hearing themselves, they are able to help each other out each time the correct the pronunciation or the structures they are studying. On the other hand, if students work on this kind of works, they are forced to use the dictionaries in order to check the correct pronunciation of the words. This is something positive because they will start pronouncing the new words without any mistakes. In this way, fossilization in avoided in a great degree.

Finally, SoundCloud is a good complement for other tools. It can be used in a mashup. A mashup is a combination of Web 2.0 resources that are combined to create a more complex task for students.  There are other tools that can be used along with SoundCloud as a way to work on the four English skills.  For instance, students can work on a blog to write essay, they can use feedly or scoop.it to read interesting articles, and they can use SoundCloud to speak and to listen to the other’s dialogues or articles. All what is takes is teacher’s devotion to create an amazing activity that can help students learn the language and develop technological skills that can be useful for them in the future.  However, this is not just about the use of technology per se Teachers should be careful with the complexity of the activities; otherwise, it would provoke adverse results. The teacher has to take into account several variables that can affect the activity such as the students’ level of English, the age of the students, and the skills students have handle the technological devices. Once the teacher knows all these elements, she can create a remarkable activities in which students can be engaged to. 

In fact, English teachers have great advantages in the use of technological tools in their classes  because it is  easier to find or to create materials that can benefit students. Currently, there should not be any excuse for avoiding the preparation of groundbreaking classes. There are a great number of distractors for students, but we do not have to complete against them; what English teachers should do is to integrate them in the class with educational purposes. The use of these tools means a giant leap in the English teaching-learning process. Besides, English teacher would be using state-of-the-art technology in order to be considered a great teacher.